Guild Wars 2

JonPeters.5630:

Arcana
I see the logic in not wanting the two changes in this line to counter each other. Moving good adept traits to master level is contrary to reducing the need to spec into this line. That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits. I think a good compromise would be to place Renewing Stamina back in the adept tier, placing is where the other professions get this type of trait, and instead move Final Shielding to the master tier where it could live alongside Arcane Retribution as two good choices in arcane builds that take Arcane Mastery in the adept tier. That could leave some interesting builds such as: 0/30/30/0/10 for fresh air, diamond skin, and renewing stamina. It also still leaves builds that put only 10 points in Arcana a chance to gain Protection by going 30 air for Tempest Defense, and 10 Earth for Elemental Shielding and still have 30 points leftover.

I still believe there is work to be done at the grandmaster tier in Fire at the very minimum and that Air and Water are the only truly good grandmaster choice right now. There are also still a handful of just terrible traits that will still get looked at, but we felt like we were already bordering on changing too much.

Thanks,

Jon

Mesmer and guardian have their vigor traits as’ 5 minor, please consider not moving renewing stamina.

P.S. bug fix for Lingering Elements is coming on Nov. 26th as well.

No kittening way.

JonPeters.5630:

Summation of high risk concerns for elementalist.

Diamond Skin
We really love this trait as it opens up some very powerful potential in the earth line to run a defensive elementalist without relying on healing power. The strength of this build is going to be the ability to quickly string small heals together to maintain that condition resistance. I think it could see use in both high damage builds looking to avoid weakness and blind, as well as in defensive builds looking to tank condition heavy classes and condition heavy mobs. I think the big question here is the base health/armor of the elementalist. Of course if you are just an elementalist you just want us to raise these, but balance must work around some fixed things and profession health and armor are an important part of defining what a profession is so that we can create powerful tools that players can actively use to circumvent these weaknesses. In this case if this trait is not powerful enough to be a grandmaster, I believe the right answer is going to be to lower the threshold, not to increase elementalist base health.

Aquamancer’s Alacrity
We moved this trait because all profession cooldown traits are in master tier, and because that is a good investment for this type of improvement. That being said, they may all not be powerful enough to warrant a master level triat right now, but I would rather increase the cooldown to 25% to get people to consider them than to have them be adept tier and allow elementalists to run all four of them.

Cleansing Wave
This is the one I am most on the fence about of all of the elementalist changes. It is a borderline master level trait and I think a better solution would be to leave it at adept tier and instead of moving Soothing Wave (which is only moving because it is better to have a 100% worthless trait at adept tier rather than master tier) we would redesign Soothing Wave into something worthy of master level.

Arcane Abatement
This is moving to adept tier because all of the fall damage traits are in that tier and in our opinion it doesn’t feel good to have to spend 20 points in a line for this kind of trait. Alacrity was the first choice to swap with it here because of the reasons stated above.

Soothing Disruption vs Cantrip Mastery
This one was debated internally for a while as well. I think swapping these traits would also help build diversity as it would let you splash 10 points in water to get Cantrip recharge, but would make you really consider going into water magic for the Regen and Vigor which is much more flavorful. I would love to hear some elementalist thoughts on that potential change.

Last but definitely not least.

Arcana
I see the logic in not wanting the two changes in this line to counter each other. Moving good adept traits to master level is contrary to reducing the need to spec into this line. That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits. I think a good compromise would be to place Renewing Stamina back in the adept tier, placing is where the other professions get this type of trait, and instead move Final Shielding to the master tier where it could live alongside Arcane Retribution as two good choices in arcane builds that take Arcane Mastery in the adept tier. That could leave some interesting builds such as: 0/30/30/0/10 for fresh air, diamond skin, and renewing stamina. It also still leaves builds that put only 10 points in Arcana a chance to gain Protection by going 30 air for Tempest Defense, and 10 Earth for Elemental Shielding and still have 30 points leftover.

I still believe there is work to be done at the grandmaster tier in Fire at the very minimum and that Air and Water are the only truly good grandmaster choice right now. There are also still a handful of just terrible traits that will still get looked at, but we felt like we were already bordering on changing too much.

Thanks,

Jon

P.S. bug fix for Lingering Elements is coming on Nov. 26th as well.

really disagree with elemental attunement since its basically the CORE of the arcana line. but thanks for at least considering cleansing wave and renewing stamina.

Staff ele her:

My build now: 0/30/25/15/0
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.1|6.1g.h2.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1c.7e.1c.7e.1c.7e.1c.7e.1c.7e.1c.7e|1c.61.1p.61.1p.61.1c.61.1p.61.1c.61|0.u6ac.p68.f6.0|3l.7|1l.25.1s.1v.2a|e

My build after the patch 0/30/30/10/0
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.1|6.1g.h2.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1c.7e.1c.7e.1c.7e.1c.7e.1c.7e.1c.7e|1c.61.1p.61.1p.61.1c.61.1p.61.1c.61|0.u67b.u68b.a6.0|3l.7|1l.25.1p.1q.2a|e

Its an improvement. So for my ele patch is a positive.

JonPeters.5630:

Summation of high risk concerns for elementalist.

………..

I still believe there is work to be done at the grandmaster tier in Fire at the very minimum and that Air and Water are the only truly good grandmaster choice right now. There are also still a handful of just terrible traits that will still get looked at, but we felt like we were already bordering on changing too much.

Thanks,

Jon

P.S. bug fix for Lingering Elements is coming on Nov. 26th as well.

Thanks for participating in the thread, let’s get a good and meaningful discussion that will help you guys enact positive and balanced changes. Don’t be afraid of changing too much when a lot needs changing.

First of all, try Diamond Skin at 80% and see if anyone takes it. 90% is kind of pointless, esp for a grandmaster trait. I don’t even know if it’ll see much play at 80%.

Cooldown reduction traits don’t mean the same for elementalist as for other classes, we’re not weaponswappers who use 2 weaponsets (and some classes use 1 for 80% of the time), we swap attunements constantly. No one is going to take 20% in all lines, that would make for a horrible spec. Make them stronger in the 30% region for specialisation at the master trait level, or more accessible to open up some 2/2 options.

Cantrip mastery is one of those things that needs to be accessible. Elementalists need survivability options since glass cannons are as glass as they get, and they don’t do the damage of other class specs. The reliance on cantrips is a symptom of a different survivability problem with eles, not the problem itself. Speaking of which, LF stunbreaker, needed, come on it’s obvious that it needs it, it’s blink.

Also I think you need to have at least one attunement per weapon giving some decent single target damage. Looking at staff personally but those autos are just wack.

Also revisit some of that D/D stuff. I don’t know if you play D/D but it’s just not up to par right now, it needs roamer capability or what is it for.

JonPeters.5630:

I think a good compromise would be to place Renewing Stamina back in the adept tier, placing is where the other professions get this type of trait, and instead move Final Shielding to the master tier where it could live alongside Arcane Retribution as two good choices in arcane builds that take Arcane Mastery in the adept tier. That could leave some interesting builds such as: 0/30/30/0/10 for fresh air, diamond skin, and renewing stamina. It also still leaves builds that put only 10 points in Arcana a chance to gain Protection by going 30 air for Tempest Defense, and 10 Earth for Elemental Shielding and still have 30 points leftover.

I kinda like that compromise. +1

JonPeters.5630:

Diamond Skin
In this case if this trait is not powerful enough to be a grandmaster, I believe the right answer is going to be to lower the threshold, not to increase elementalist base health.

That is reasonable. You have to understand how small a window 10% is on an elementalist … a bunker build hit would breach that threshold easily. The same is true of Vital Striking in Water attunement. Then there is Final Shielding … that 25% life can be completely be bypassed by most classes in a single hit which means the trait never fires.

JonPeters.5630:

Aquamancer’s Alacrity
We moved this trait because all profession cooldown traits are in master tier, and because that is a good investment for this type of improvement. That being said, they may all not be powerful enough to warrant a master level triat right now, but I would rather increase the cooldown to 25% to get people to consider them than to have them be adept tier and allow elementalists to run all four of them.

You have to remember that you guys waged a war against ‘soft healers’ and all our Water abilities are fairly weak vs what every other attunement provides. I mean, I would love for Water to do damage akin to Air/Fire … but until then a 20% reduction does not warrant Master tier.

JonPeters.5630:

Cleansing Wave
This is the one I am most on the fence about of all of the elementalist changes. It is a borderline master level trait and I think a better solution would be to leave it at adept tier and instead of moving Soothing Wave (which is only moving because it is better to have a 100% worthless trait at adept tier rather than master tier) we would redesign Soothing Wave into something worthy of master level.

Ok, I have to admit to being a little pieved that as a developer you admit something is completely useless and were willing to let it be that way for a lower cost. As a Software VnV guy, I don’t let my developers get away with that ><. A redesign is exactly what should happen.

JonPeters.5630:

Arcana
I see the logic in not wanting the two changes in this line to counter each other. Moving good adept traits to master level is contrary to reducing the need to spec into this line. That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits. I think a good compromise would be to place Renewing Stamina back in the adept tier, placing is where the other professions get this type of trait, and instead move Final Shielding to the master tier where it could live alongside Arcane Retribution as two good choices in arcane builds that take Arcane Mastery in the adept tier. That could leave some interesting builds such as: 0/30/30/0/10 for fresh air, diamond skin, and renewing stamina. It also still leaves builds that put only 10 points in Arcana a chance to gain Protection by going 30 air for Tempest Defense, and 10 Earth for Elemental Shielding and still have 30 points leftover.

Jon, Mesmers and Guardians both get Vigor on Crit as a 5 point minor … and Elementalist have a completely worthless 5 point minor in air that would be the perfect place for this ability to wind up. That would allow you to put a new trait in Arcane to help the class some in its weaker areas.

JonPeters.5630:

I still believe there is work to be done at the grandmaster tier in Fire at the very minimum and that Air and Water are the only truly good grandmaster choice right now. There are also still a handful of just terrible traits that will still get looked at, but we felt like we were already bordering on changing too much.

Fire and Earth are always going to be shunned due to the fact that you based these lines on conditions (burning and bleed) when Elementalist is not a viable condition class. there is no bleed on crit trait to even make earth remotely work properly and most of fire needs you to be in fire … which means you lose the other half of your condition abilities. If you really wanted to help Earth/Fire out then you should redo them without reliance/focus on conditions.

P.S. bug fix for Lingering Elements is coming on Nov. 26th as well.

Thank god.

Jon, thank you so much for the response.

JonPeters.5630:

Diamond Skin

Agreed, this has potential and you need to be careful with it, but opens up some interesting game-play opportunities.

Aquamancer’s Alacrity

That is fine. The X Alacrity skills are fine at master (although check out the CD reduction traits of some other classes and move them up, Ahem…Hair Trigger and fireforged trigger (engie), Blade-training (mesmers).

Cleansing Wave

This change isn’t a heavy nerf to eles, but does remove some very necessary condi-clear on some builds, and I feel like will actually hurt build diversity. If you must to avoid power creep, that is fine, but you are going to force eles to be heavier bunkers just to have a shot vs. condis.

Arcane Abatement

This is a very good change and I am glad to see this for the people who actually want this skill. It also makes it easier for jumping-puzzle eles that don’t want to run a heavy-water build, and don’t want to carry around a situational skill all the time.

Soothing Disruption vs Cantrip Mastery

It depends on what you do with renewing stamina. If you leave that, then feel free to take soothing disruption up one, b/c then there are 2 options to get vigor reasonably. If you move renewing stamina up, then soothing disruption can’t go up: d/d eles NEED their vigor (I have asked cmc how ele can beat class X, and it is always a LONG list of important skills we have to dodge b/c so much kills us). However, if cantrip mastery were adept it would make the trait viable for builds that aren’t 3x cantrip, and really help the eles who love their lightning flash in an offensive build.

Arcana

Moving both ele attunement and renewing stamina up will kill viable d/d builds, as they NEED both to stay in the fray. Elemental attunement probably belongs at the Master level, even though so much ele balancing seems to have already happened with every ele taking this trait in mind. The prot. on. aura trait is nice, but it is not enough prot. by itself, and just strengthen’s already powerful situational defenses, rather than give access to a new one.

The loss of vigor to master level, however, is crippling to melee eles that HAVE to be skillful and dodge SO MANY skills, and are already at a disadvantage in every fight anyway. Please be very careful with these changes, b/c d/d builds are already hanging from a thread, and the buffed traits won’t nearly make up for this major loss. FYI: nobody is complaining about eles dodging too much, because they know that eles need to dodge a lot to survive. Also, memsers and guardians, who have even more survivability skills, get their vigor for even less. Adept is justified on the squishiest class you have.

Fix other grandmasters + fix lingering elements

Thank you. I know you want to be careful with ele changes b/c is it dangerous to swap too many things at once, but just be mindful that you don’t actually make our already unviable specs/playstyles worse just by being careful.

JonPeters.5630:

Cleansing Wave
This is the one I am most on the fence about of all of the elementalist changes. It is a borderline master level trait and I think a better solution would be to leave it at adept tier and instead of moving Soothing Wave (which is only moving because it is better to have a 100% worthless trait at adept tier rather than master tier) we would redesign Soothing Wave into something worthy of master level.

This. Please this. For a similar reason to the arcana logic. We need water V to live a lot of the time in WvW, not because it’s OP, but because our low HP pool and armor makes being immobilized and not able to cleanse it a death sentence. Moving this up would make people dump 20 in water rather than 10 (doing the opposite of what you’re trying to do). That and +1 anything that replaces “100% worthless” traits with something useful.

JonPeters.5630:

Arcana
I see the logic in not wanting the two changes in this line to counter each other. Moving good adept traits to master level is contrary to reducing the need to spec into this line. That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits. I think a good compromise would be to place Renewing Stamina back in the adept tier, placing is where the other professions get this type of trait, and instead move Final Shielding to the master tier where it could live alongside Arcane Retribution as two good choices in arcane builds that take Arcane Mastery in the adept tier. That could leave some interesting builds such as: 0/30/30/0/10 for fresh air, diamond skin, and renewing stamina. It also still leaves builds that put only 10 points in Arcana a chance to gain Protection by going 30 air for Tempest Defense, and 10 Earth for Elemental Shielding and still have 30 points leftover.

That would probably be better, since the traditional d/d ele builds (aura share or otherwise) could still use both elemental attunement and renewing stamina. Being in melee range of a zerg with light armor is enough of a pain with vigor and protection, being forced to pick one or the other could very well make it impossible.

That and from a WvW perspective, if you moved both there wouldn’t be anything useful left to pick in adept arcana if you used daggers. Final shielding would be the closest one to being useful, and blocking 3 hits isn’t going to do much if you have 60 people all swinging at you.

JonPeters.5630:

xiv.7136:

JonPeters.5630:

Summation of high risk concerns for elementalist.

………..

I still believe there is work to be done at the grandmaster tier in Fire at the very minimum and that Air and Water are the only truly good grandmaster choice right now. There are also still a handful of just terrible traits that will still get looked at, but we felt like we were already bordering on changing too much.

Thanks,

Jon

P.S. bug fix for Lingering Elements is coming on Nov. 26th as well.

Thanks for participating in the thread, let’s get a good and meaningful discussion that will help you guys enact positive and balanced changes. Don’t be afraid of changing too much when a lot needs changing.

First of all, try Diamond Skin at 80% and see if anyone takes it. 90% is kind of pointless, esp for a grandmaster trait. I don’t even know if it’ll see much play at 80%.

Cooldown reduction traits don’t mean the same for elementalist as for other classes, we’re not weaponswappers who use 2 weaponsets (and some classes use 1 for 80% of the time), we swap attunements constantly. No one is going to take 20% in all lines, that would make for a horrible spec. Make them stronger in the 30% region for specialisation at the master trait level, or more accessible to open up some 2/2 options.

Cantrip mastery is one of those things that needs to be accessible. Elementalists need survivability options since glass cannons are as glass as they get, and they don’t do the damage of other class specs. The reliance on cantrips is a symptom of a different survivability problem with eles, not the problem itself. Speaking of which, LF stunbreaker, needed, come on it’s obvious that it needs it, it’s blink.

Also I think you need to have at least one attunement per weapon giving some decent single target damage. Looking at staff personally but those autos are just wack.

Also revisit some of that D/D stuff. I don’t know if you play D/D but it’s just not up to par right now, it needs roamer capability or what is it for.

Right now I am thinking 85% on diamond skin as high health eles could break this at 80% imo.

Also thinking 25% cooldown on the alacrity traits so we can move slowly. If we go 30% and have to nerf after that I would not be happy. The diamond skin thing is possible for dec 10th. The cooldown thing on alacrity traits is more likely to be the following patch because it has a lot of testing requirements that concern me.

Jon

Cool cool

Oh and that superspeed thing in air, think about bumping up duration if you want to keep it as is, it’s just too short

Beer time

JonPeters.5630:

Summation of high risk concerns for elementalist.

Last but definitely not least.

Arcana
I see the logic in not wanting the two changes in this line to counter each other. Moving good adept traits to master level is contrary to reducing the need to spec into this line. That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits. I think a good compromise would be to place Renewing Stamina back in the adept tier, placing is where the other professions get this type of trait, and instead move Final Shielding to the master tier where it could live alongside Arcane Retribution as two good choices in arcane builds that take Arcane Mastery in the adept tier. That could leave some interesting builds such as: 0/30/30/0/10 for fresh air, diamond skin, and renewing stamina. It also still leaves builds that put only 10 points in Arcana a chance to gain Protection by going 30 air for Tempest Defense, and 10 Earth for Elemental Shielding and still have 30 points leftover.

I still believe there is work to be done at the grandmaster tier in Fire at the very minimum and that Air and Water are the only truly good grandmaster choice right now. There are also still a handful of just terrible traits that will still get looked at, but we felt like we were already bordering on changing too much.

Thanks,

Jon

P.S. bug fix for Lingering Elements is coming on Nov. 26th as well.

Thanks for addressing the Ele forum Jon.

But most of all, thanks for saying this, " I think a good compromise would be to place Renewing Stamina back in the adept tier, placing is where the other professions get this type of trait, and instead move Final Shielding to the master tier where it could live alongside Arcane Retribution as two good choices in arcane builds that take Arcane Mastery in the adept tier. " That’s a good solution and solid compromise.

Ray.2640:

First I was happy, then I saw this:

Ozoug.4158:

Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.
Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.

Why is it that when changing something in the Elementalist you always accompany it with huge nerfs to avoid “power creep” and when buffing other classes it’s just a flat out buff with no strings attached?

Serves me right for getting excited, never noticed that…

JonPeters.5630:

I still believe there is work to be done at the grandmaster tier in Fire at the very minimum and that Air and Water are the only truly good grandmaster choice right now. There are also still a handful of just terrible traits that will still get looked at, but we felt like we were already bordering on changing too much.

i feel the same way for the most part. fire needs a lot of work. i trait fire because of role playing, but it feels like i could trait air or water and it wouldn’t make more of a difference on the damage.

as for changing too much, don’t worry about that. i think i can speak for the majority of elementalist when i say we’d rather relearn the class if it means we gain viability other than dagger / dagger. which i refuse to use. absolutely despise that playstyle on an ele. we need more damage options. and buffing fire could just be the solution for that, if it’s done right.

i quoted myself from the main feedback thread, below, but edited in some ideas for new 25s.

Forgotten Legend.9281:

ELEMENTALIST

1) why not combine elemental attunement and lingerig elements? this would be the new arcana 15.

2) move Conjurer to Arcana to fill the hole left by elemental attunement, because there is only ONE trait for conjures, and it doesn’t make sense in fire line, as there are 5 conjures spread over all 4 elements. (and no Arcane Conjure)

3) i don’t really understand having defensive traits in the fire line, especially fire 5. i’d much rather fire 5 be changed to give power per level while attuned to fire, or +300 range while attuned to fire. leaving defensive selectable traits is fine, allowing for choices of course. the 5, 15, and 25 should all be offensive traits.

4) the elemental 15 traits basically turn attunement swap buttons into spells. and then there are master traits that add extra effects to the attunement swaps, by adding AoE boons. i’d much rather see those 15s rolled into a single arcana master trait, because in my opinion, that would be much more useful than evasive arcana (see point 6 below.) combining all the 15s and all 4 of the master traits that buff the F1-F4 keys could be a grandmaster trait. and would really then feel like a grandmaster of attunement swapping.

5) after freeing up the 15s, the 25s would be moved into the 15 slots, because frankly, the 25s are copies of other classes’ ADEPT traits. (+10% damage while endurance is full, +10% damage while target has x condition) and then new elemental 25s would be made. that would be useful no matter what attunement you’re in. for example, all projectiles pierce targets. all projectile spells launch +1 projectile. all fields last longer. combos you finish do +20% more damage. spells have 33% chance to become projectile finishers. +x AoE targets

6) i don’t understand the reasoning for grandmaster arcana traits at all. evasive arcana is a copy of a master trait for every other class. and in my opinion, is not worthy of grandmaster status. and it feels more like it belongs in Earth, as earth line seems to be the defensive line. the other one only affects 5 utility skills, which means a grandmaster trait is wasted on at most, 3 skills on a skill bar, more likely 2 or 1. i’ll never trait 30 arcana as long as we have such weak grandmaster traits.

EDIT: i just realized, that if Evasive Arcana gained a spell at the start of a dodge roll (in addition to at the end of a dodge roll), it would actually be useful for defense. and would then merit grandmaster status.

JonPeters.5630:

P.S. bug fix for Lingering Elements is coming on Nov. 26th as well.

Jon,

Woohoo for fixed Lingering Elements!

As a (primarily) Staff Ele, I totally agree that Elemental Attunement is strong enough to be a Grandmaster trait (not that I really want to see that happen, mind you) so I can support the move to Master tier.

I also think that moving Renewing Stamina to Master tier at the same time is just a bit harsh. What if Renewing Stamina became a Minor trait in the Arcane line? Then maybe re-order the Minor traits such that Renewing Stamina goes in at 5, Arcane Fury moves to 15, Lingering Elements moves to 25 and Arcane Precision went somewhere else (Air 5 maybe? It’d have to be renamed too). This would keep Renewing Stamina in line with Guardians/Mesmers.

I also really appreciate Blasting Staff becoming an Adept tier trait. This combined with the new Diamond Skin has got me seriously considering a 0/10/30/20/10 Staff-Blasting, Condition-Defying, Damage-Dealing Mental Elle ; D

Cheers!

Generally I see the new diamond skin as a very hard to balance trait. In certain builds (based on tou/healingPower) played against builds with no power (with mostly condi damage/cc) it will be mega OP in 1v1 scenarios. On the other side against some power or just balanced builds or in organized 3v3 combat it will be almost useless trait (at least a lot worse than other GM trait – Automated Response on engi). Its imho very rock-paper-scissors oriented trait. Personally I dont like this kind of balance, where my destiny as a rock is to win vs scisors and to lose vs paper.

JonPeters.5630:

Summation of high risk concerns for elementalist.

Diamond Skin
We really love this trait as it opens up some very powerful potential in the earth line to run a defensive elementalist without relying on healing power. The strength of this build is going to be the ability to quickly string small heals together to maintain that condition resistance. I think it could see use in both high damage builds looking to avoid weakness and blind, as well as in defensive builds looking to tank condition heavy classes and condition heavy mobs. I think the big question here is the base health/armor of the elementalist. Of course if you are just an elementalist you just want us to raise these, but balance must work around some fixed things and profession health and armor are an important part of defining what a profession is so that we can create powerful tools that players can actively use to circumvent these weaknesses. In this case if this trait is not powerful enough to be a grandmaster, I believe the right answer is going to be to lower the threshold, not to increase elementalist base health.

Aquamancer’s Alacrity
We moved this trait because all profession cooldown traits are in master tier, and because that is a good investment for this type of improvement. That being said, they may all not be powerful enough to warrant a master level triat right now, but I would rather increase the cooldown to 25% to get people to consider them than to have them be adept tier and allow elementalists to run all four of them.

Cleansing Wave
This is the one I am most on the fence about of all of the elementalist changes. It is a borderline master level trait and I think a better solution would be to leave it at adept tier and instead of moving Soothing Wave (which is only moving because it is better to have a 100% worthless trait at adept tier rather than master tier) we would redesign Soothing Wave into something worthy of master level.

Arcane Abatement
This is moving to adept tier because all of the fall damage traits are in that tier and in our opinion it doesn’t feel good to have to spend 20 points in a line for this kind of trait. Alacrity was the first choice to swap with it here because of the reasons stated above.

Soothing Disruption vs Cantrip Mastery
This one was debated internally for a while as well. I think swapping these traits would also help build diversity as it would let you splash 10 points in water to get Cantrip recharge, but would make you really consider going into water magic for the Regen and Vigor which is much more flavorful. I would love to hear some elementalist thoughts on that potential change.

Last but definitely not least.

Arcana
I see the logic in not wanting the two changes in this line to counter each other. Moving good adept traits to master level is contrary to reducing the need to spec into this line. That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits. I think a good compromise would be to place Renewing Stamina back in the adept tier, placing is where the other professions get this type of trait, and instead move Final Shielding to the master tier where it could live alongside Arcane Retribution as two good choices in arcane builds that take Arcane Mastery in the adept tier. That could leave some interesting builds such as: 0/30/30/0/10 for fresh air, diamond skin, and renewing stamina. It also still leaves builds that put only 10 points in Arcana a chance to gain Protection by going 30 air for Tempest Defense, and 10 Earth for Elemental Shielding and still have 30 points leftover.

I still believe there is work to be done at the grandmaster tier in Fire at the very minimum and that Air and Water are the only truly good grandmaster choice right now. There are also still a handful of just terrible traits that will still get looked at, but we felt like we were already bordering on changing too much.

Thanks,

Jon

P.S. bug fix for Lingering Elements is coming on Nov. 26th as well.

What fix is there for Lingering Elements? The trait is weak by design. Why not just swap it out with Elemental Attunement? Or if Elemental Attunement is too strong for a 15 trait, how about making it the 25 trait. Arcane Precision is an incredibly weak trait, and could easily be the 15 trait even if you were to buff it.

JonPeters.5630:

Right now I am thinking 85% on diamond skin as high health eles could break this at 80% imo.

I like this a lot, actually. Moves me more into the “love this” territory and off the fence. It will be interesting to see how this works with a new spec I’m building.

I think one other thing I would love to see is a way to play more glyphs without losing all the survivability cantrips afford – one of my favorite things about ele is the versatility of things like evasive arcana (which is MY reason for going 30 into arcane!). I love that I can choose which effect will help more in each situation (ie. I only have enough endurance for one dodge, so I can stun the enemy player hitting my teammate, or I can hold off and do an aoe heal for said teammate.) Alternatively, having more traits that cause such effects (outside the arcane line, even!), either on an action (like attunement swapping and dodging do now) or with certain skills (utilities or even auto-attacks), would introduce even more options for differing play styles.

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

really disagree with elemental attunement since its basically the CORE of the arcana line.

yep. Attunements (and ofc swapping those) is our core mechanics and something like Elemental Attunement should be a part of it, not an “optional” trait. Active ele playstyle (swapping) should be promoted while right now in PVE what matter is FGS4wall, LH1, StaffFire1+2. Those plystyles should be suboptimal and dont even taken into account by advanced ele players.

haviz.1340:

Elemental attunement should be 15 minor since every other 15 minor trait triggers upon attunement change. Renewing stamina should stay at 10, it’s not like mesmer hasn’t have exactly same trait at 5 minor while having more tools to survive.

That is actually a great idea since lingering elements is half broke anyway. Move elemental attunement to one of the arcane minor traits. I would be okay if it was even the 25pt trait. But this really should be a minor.

JonPeters.5630:

Aquamancer’s Alacrity
We moved this trait because all profession cooldown traits are in master tier, and because that is a good investment for this type of improvement. That being said, they may all not be powerful enough to warrant a master level triat right now, but I would rather increase the cooldown to 25% to get people to consider them than to have them be adept tier and allow elementalists to run all four of them.

Cleansing Wave
This is the one I am most on the fence about of all of the elementalist changes. It is a borderline master level trait and I think a better solution would be to leave it at adept tier and instead of moving Soothing Wave (which is only moving because it is better to have a 100% worthless trait at adept tier rather than master tier) we would redesign Soothing Wave into something worthy of master level.

Soothing Disruption vs Cantrip Mastery
This one was debated internally for a while as well. I think swapping these traits would also help build diversity as it would let you splash 10 points in water to get Cantrip recharge, but would make you really consider going into water magic for the Regen and Vigor which is much more flavorful. I would love to hear some elementalist thoughts on that potential change.

Last but definitely not least.

Arcana
I see the logic in not wanting the two changes in this line to counter each other. Moving good adept traits to master level is contrary to reducing the need to spec into this line. That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits. I think a good compromise would be to place Renewing Stamina back in the adept tier, placing is where the other professions get this type of trait, and instead move Final Shielding to the master tier where it could live alongside Arcane Retribution as two good choices in arcane builds that take Arcane Mastery in the adept tier. That could leave some interesting builds such as: 0/30/30/0/10 for fresh air, diamond skin, and renewing stamina. It also still leaves builds that put only 10 points in Arcana a chance to gain Protection by going 30 air for Tempest Defense, and 10 Earth for Elemental Shielding and still have 30 points leftover.

I still believe there is work to be done at the grandmaster tier in Fire at the very minimum and that Air and Water are the only truly good grandmaster choice right now. There are also still a handful of just terrible traits that will still get looked at, but we felt like we were already bordering on changing too much.

Thanks,

Jon

P.S. bug fix for Lingering Elements is coming on Nov. 26th as well.

Hello, Elementalist with 1,000 (out of 1700) hours actively played this class. I already made a post on page 13 in Dec. 10th Balance Preview topic and I’m very happy you took the time to reply in an Ele-only topic for more clarity.

As for the Cantrip Mastery & Soothing Disruption most of my times played as a Cleric or more Defensive Ele, I rarely use both. If I go 30 in Water for Cleansing Water, I pick Soothing Disruption and Cleansing Wave/Aquamancer’s Alacrity. If I go Defensive I usually go 20 for Cantrip Mastery and Cleansing Wave. I do know few who went 15 in Water for the Cleansing Wave and Healing Ripple so it might affect those builds but that extra 5 that’s left doesn’t really have make much difference so I think they’ll just go 20 in Water.
The thing about our Cantrips is that they’re defensive and situational. The Cantrip recharge isn’t a must in a build since recharge rarely comes to shine because the fights are over most of the times. We’ve ether won, escaped or died and Water has better Traits then recharge. The recharge is a nice add to a Defensive trait setup where you won’t rely on Cleansing Water so you just don’t bring Soothing Disruption at all. I don’t think it would matter much if you switch out these two because Soothing Disruption really depends on the Ele having XI Cleansing Water.

As far as the Arcana tree I will feel sorry for Ele Attunement since every Ele I know is using it. As for Renewing Stamina it was rarely picked over Ele At. so we’d had to go 20 in Arcana anyway to achieve this. I do think D/D’s are the ones that will feel sad for this but even in PvP I rarely see anymore zerk d/d’s, most are now just pure bunkers. They’re the ones now that won’t be able to go El.At+R.S.+Evasive Arcana.
If anything, I believe Arcana trait needs some Foci love tbh. But please read my other post I think I made some good points there. I even had to shorten it down because it was at 5500 characters long.

Taldren.7523:

Then there is Final Shielding … that 25% life can be completely be bypassed by most classes in a single hit which means the trait never fires.

needs to be re-coded to activate before the damage is applied for any hit that would reduce health to below the threshold. For all of these health-activated traits, really. would make that armor of earth trait more usable too

Lavadiel.6231:

yep. Attunements (and ofc swapping those) is our core mechanics and something like Elemental Attunement should be a part of it, not an “optional” trait. Active ele playstyle (swapping) should be promoted while right now in PVE what matter is FGS4wall, LH1, StaffFire1+2. Those plystyles should be suboptimal and dont even taken into account by advanced ele players.

Few “advanced” ele players are actually playing build that is not about fgs/lh/staff. Check sticky Zelyhn’s guide.

JonPeters.5630:

Soothing Disruption vs Cantrip Mastery
This one was debated internally for a while as well. I think swapping these traits would also help build diversity as it would let you splash 10 points in water to get Cantrip recharge, but would make you really consider going into water magic for the Regen and Vigor which is much more flavorful. I would love to hear some elementalist thoughts on that potential change.

Please do this switch.

You are absolutely right to try to break elementalists dependance on Arcane, however most builds are also heavily dependent on Water. This change would help that a lot.

Personally, I run 30/0/0/10/30 on a WvW Staff Ele. This is the sort of non-standard build that I assume you are trying to promote. I would much prefer to have Cantrip Mastery instead of Soothing Disruption. It is one of the biggest things I miss from my old 10/0/0/30/30 days.

Lingering elements fixed?

Fixed as in, it’ll work with Evasive Arcana too? 8D

JonPeters.5630:

Summation of high risk concerns for elementalist.

Diamond Skin
We really love this trait as it opens up some very powerful potential in the earth line to run a defensive elementalist without relying on healing power. The strength of this build is going to be the ability to quickly string small heals together to maintain that condition resistance. I think it could see use in both high damage builds looking to avoid weakness and blind, as well as in defensive builds looking to tank condition heavy classes and condition heavy mobs. I think the big question here is the base health/armor of the elementalist. Of course if you are just an elementalist you just want us to raise these, but balance must work around some fixed things and profession health and armor are an important part of defining what a profession is so that we can create powerful tools that players can actively use to circumvent these weaknesses. In this case if this trait is not powerful enough to be a grandmaster, I believe the right answer is going to be to lower the threshold, not to increase elementalist base health.

Aquamancer’s Alacrity
We moved this trait because all profession cooldown traits are in master tier, and because that is a good investment for this type of improvement. That being said, they may all not be powerful enough to warrant a master level triat right now, but I would rather increase the cooldown to 25% to get people to consider them than to have them be adept tier and allow elementalists to run all four of them.

Cleansing Wave
This is the one I am most on the fence about of all of the elementalist changes. It is a borderline master level trait and I think a better solution would be to leave it at adept tier and instead of moving Soothing Wave (which is only moving because it is better to have a 100% worthless trait at adept tier rather than master tier) we would redesign Soothing Wave into something worthy of master level.

Arcane Abatement
This is moving to adept tier because all of the fall damage traits are in that tier and in our opinion it doesn’t feel good to have to spend 20 points in a line for this kind of trait. Alacrity was the first choice to swap with it here because of the reasons stated above.

Soothing Disruption vs Cantrip Mastery
This one was debated internally for a while as well. I think swapping these traits would also help build diversity as it would let you splash 10 points in water to get Cantrip recharge, but would make you really consider going into water magic for the Regen and Vigor which is much more flavorful. I would love to hear some elementalist thoughts on that potential change.

Last but definitely not least.

Arcana
I see the logic in not wanting the two changes in this line to counter each other. Moving good adept traits to master level is contrary to reducing the need to spec into this line. That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits. I think a good compromise would be to place Renewing Stamina back in the adept tier, placing is where the other professions get this type of trait, and instead move Final Shielding to the master tier where it could live alongside Arcane Retribution as two good choices in arcane builds that take Arcane Mastery in the adept tier. That could leave some interesting builds such as: 0/30/30/0/10 for fresh air, diamond skin, and renewing stamina. It also still leaves builds that put only 10 points in Arcana a chance to gain Protection by going 30 air for Tempest Defense, and 10 Earth for Elemental Shielding and still have 30 points leftover.

I still believe there is work to be done at the grandmaster tier in Fire at the very minimum and that Air and Water are the only truly good grandmaster choice right now. There are also still a handful of just terrible traits that will still get looked at, but we felt like we were already bordering on changing too much.

Thanks,

Jon

P.S. bug fix for Lingering Elements is coming on Nov. 26th as well.

Thank you,
because you read our feedback and think about it. I hope the balance team listen to you.

JonPeters.5630:

stuff

OH MY GOD, after months of feeling neglected, the lead game designer finally comes to talk. <3

Let me say this. I think the core of these changes is very good, but I think that moving the “powerful adept traits” – Cleansing Wave, Elemental Attunement, and Renewing Stamina – is pretty bad for a number of reasons.

Cleansing Wave is very powerful. However, outside of it, Elementalists actually don’t have amazing access to Condition Removal unless they take Ether Renewal (which can easily be interrupted). Cleansing Wave allows people to build a number of Ele builds while still retaining a good amount of Condi Removal that the Ele is so good for. Also, this is by far one of the best Support abilities the Ele has in the game, and moving it up means more Eles are going to start going 20 Water as opposed to just 10 Water with the changes made.

On the topic of the dynamic duo – Elemental Attunement and Renewing Stamina – let me be the first to say that these traits are obviously overpowered.

Vigor on Crit should probably be a Major Master Trait for ALL classes that have it (including Guardian and Mesmer), BUT consider that the Elementalist has very few in built defenses outside of Cantrips. Renewing Stamina is so vital to the survival of a lot of glassy Dungeon Elementalist builds, as well as to a lot of bursty roaming and sPvP Ele builds (especially ones that try to take Dagger as opposed to Scepter, since I know the Scepter ability is getting moved down to Adept, which is good). If this change goes through, it’s actually going to be even harder for glassy Eles to exist than it was before, which I think is really bad, considering glass Elementalist is one of the specs that needs the most love in this game.

And finally, Elemental Attunement. I’m actually fine with this getting moved to Master Tier, but NOT if Renewing Stamina gets moved up with it. If Eles cannot take Elemental Attunement/Renewing Stamina/Evasive Arcana all together, you will have actually entirely destroyed a number of builds Eles like to use. While I agree in the goal to create more build diversity, COMPLETELY DESTROYING a spec that Eles have enjoyed and that is frankly underpowered in this current meta, yet players still very much enjoy playing, is really an unnecessary change. I think making the changes you’ve made so far to entice players to try something different by making it equally enjoyable, rather than destroying basically all of the old specs, would be a far better gesture.

Either way though, since you guys are finally reducing the base CDR of Attunement Swapping to 13 seconds (which is wonderful), have you considered making other large changes to the Ele like that? Specifically, Elemental Attunement does indeed feel a bit overpowered, but it’s also something I’ve seen so many Eles splash 10 in Arcana for just to get. I feel like Elemental Attunement is so linked to Attunement Swapping in the way the Ele plays. Maybe consider our dream of just making Elemental Attunement something inherent in the Elementalist so that, on top of the 13-second base cooldown, Eles finally feel like a complete class to most players, even with 0 in Arcana?

P.S. These are some of the most thoughtful comments I’ve seen from a dev on the Elementalist in a while (and some of the most realistic). Please do come talk to us more, we really love it when you do. ^^

LINGERING ATTUNEMENT FIX!!!!!!!! OMFGOMFGOMFGOMFG sorry, this is insane if u do this my trust in anet is restored -

First of all, thanks for the replies. I have played my elementalis for over 1500 hours and I am seriosly concerned about the current patch ideas because of the following:

Diamond Skin
This skill is going to be hard to balance, as somebody already stated. I guess it will range from useless to borderline OP depending on the enemy you are facing. It is also very hard to tell how this skill will fare in group compositions. I would rather prefer something like “incoming condition duration reduced by 33%” without a health threshold. That way the effect would become far more calculable, there could be some active counterplay on the condition players side and condition remove would become less of a concern for an elementalist. This would also complement geomancers freedom or rock solid really well.

The way it is planned now it will open the door to come insanely cheesy builds that only come down to getting more heal-per-second that the enemy has physical damage per second and you can simply start emotespamming your opponent. I don’t want this type of gameplay.

Renewing stamina
Please leave this on adept level, you have already given a good example yourself how this would complement a new build really well. Also players that want to play the classic D/D ele can still continue to run their old builds. The patch is designed to open new build options, not remove the old ones.

On a side note: I agree with some of the players here that as this trait procs on critical it fits the air line much better than arcana (same goes for arcane precision by the way).

Elemental Attunement
As players have already stated this is the core mechanic of arcana, or at least it feels like it. It is the one trait that makes up for the low hp and armor by providing regeneration and protection and swiftness (and one might when attuning to fire xD ). You should be very, very careful when making any changes to it. It feels so much like a core mechanic that players are even suggesting to make this an inherent action when switching attunements, and it would seem right. Keep in mind that this is also one of the core teamplay teamplay traits. I agree it is strong, but it better should be.

Cleansing wave
I seriously think that removing one condition every 10-13 seconds is not that much for a master trait. Warriors for instance, can remove more in the same time using cleansing ire alone. The same applies to cleansing water grandmaster as well.

Aquamancers alacrity
I can understand moving this up for consistency, but this will affect support eles in WvW, that usually went with this, cleansing water and cleansing wave. In addition to that, reducing cooldown abilities are not as good as for other classes because

- we have 4 attunements, so if we use all attunements equally, we get much less average cooldown reduction
- warriors for example always get an additional effect on their cooldown reducing traits, like might on critical or additional damage when opponent is stunned

One with air
1,5 seconds is barely noticable infight, +0,5 seconds to allow boon duration builds get more out of it seems reasonable. This would really make it a powerful trait for fresh air users.

Arcane precision
A rather lackluster trait for 25 points, given the low chance to proc.

Soothing wave
Does anybody actually use this trait? As you already mentioned, it’s not a viable option even at adept level. I liked the change of Buring fire (Cleansing fire when you get 3 conditions) a lot. You might consider something like “cleansing wave (Dagger water skill 5) when you drop below 50% health” or a similar effect.

Final shielding
You have well realized that this trait needs a buff, even with 60 seconds cooldown I doubt it would see much use. This might be different if renewing stamina is moved to air.

Vigorous scepter
This skill does not synergize with vigor from phoenix.

Winborne dagger
A good trait in theory, but unlike its warrior counterpart it does not work out of combat

JonPeters.5630:

I still believe there is work to be done at the grandmaster tier in Fire at the very minimum

As someone who wants to have a Fire ele, I can only say this, “YES!” It feels wrong that, even with the dec 10 changes, Pyromancer’s Puissance has strong competition from Internal Fire.

JonPeters.5630:

instead of moving Soothing Wave (which is only moving because it is better to have a 100% worthless trait at adept tier rather than master tier) we would redesign Soothing Wave into something worthy of master level.

In the dec 10 preview, Burning Fire gained a new effect and got pushed up a tier. If Soothing Wave gets knocked down, I would expect that to happen again. As such, I think this is preferable to moving Cleansing Wave.

My build concept actually touches upon both skills (Signet of Water and Frost Bow). I’d prefer to have a good master-level Soothing Wave to compliment that.

JonPeters.5630:

xiv.7136:

JonPeters.5630:

Summation of high risk concerns for elementalist.

………..

I still believe there is work to be done at the grandmaster tier in Fire at the very minimum and that Air and Water are the only truly good grandmaster choice right now. There are also still a handful of just terrible traits that will still get looked at, but we felt like we were already bordering on changing too much.

Thanks,

Jon

P.S. bug fix for Lingering Elements is coming on Nov. 26th as well.

Right now I am thinking 85% on diamond skin as high health eles could break this at 80% imo.

Also thinking 25% cooldown on the alacrity traits so we can move slowly. If we go 30% and have to nerf after that I would not be happy. The diamond skin thing is possible for dec 10th. The cooldown thing on alacrity traits is more likely to be the following patch because it has a lot of testing requirements that concern me.

Jon

I think 85% for diamond skin would be good testing area. I think people would try it at 90% you would see it get play at first and then it wouldn’t get used. You need to the healing to retop your self so its at least minimum of 20 in water.

I think most ele’s feel that the arcana tree is in pretty good shape and after these proposed changes (with renewing stamina staying at adept) is that arcana would be a perfect tree on par if not better than Water.

I could only think of 2 weak traits left and thats windborne dagger. Elemental surge actually doesn’t look weak its just that it requires arcane which is a utility slot. So it doesn’t get picked over EA. If their was a way to get the elemental surge effects with out sacrificing a utility slot or the effect lasted longer people would pick it up.

Fire:

Burning Precision – potentially a awesome trait the problem is 1 second of burning. It would get picked up if it was a 2 second burning base.

Flame Barrier should just be merged with One with Fire and kept at a 5 pt. Have to see how it all plays out on the 26th though.

First of all Jon P. TY for your responses and for listening to us!!!

I couldn’t be happier if you kept cleansing wave and renewing stamina in adept tiers!!!

Thank you so much for all this! it would be awesome if we were able to keep renewing stanima and elemental attunement both are usually key traits in all my builds. The tempest defense changes seem interesting. will the damage bonus work with blowout skills also? What are the slim chances that you guys will change anything about the way Ride The Lightning functions ?

As an avid d/d player in WvW and spvp:

I will be looking at trying out 10/10/0/20/30, and 0/10/30/0/30, and 0/0/30/20/20.

IMO losing Elemental Attunement to still hold onto extra vigor from Renewing Stamina isn’t a big deal. They are multiple ways to give ourselves the sprint and regen after the changes. Windborne dagger should be the last thing you put points into. I would instead take final shielding. For speed you can do 10 air or travelers runes. For regen you use 20 points in water for Soothing Disruption, which is far better than taking 8s off of lightning flash and cleansing fire. The only time I used the cantrip reduction was when I had 30 in water’s Cleansing Water, because then you would be doing 3 things every time you used a cantrip. Now we are left with 2 strong things to test: 1. auto-casting cleansing flame (which should also grant regen and vigor from Soothing Disruption if it works properly), and 2. keeping topped off in health from both high armor from 30 earth, coupled with shorter water cds to prevent the application of debuffs being applied to us. This will likely require some clerics pieces to ensure.

My questions:

If we have conditions on us while running diamond skin, then heal ourselves back over the 90% threshhold, are they automatically removed?

Will you remove the ability to apply cripple/ immobilize to us while we’re in mist form? It is very common to apply these 2 things before an ele can escape with either mistform or vapor form, but people are applying them after they are used, and it’s really annoying. I’ve also been killed instantly while moving in mistform by unknown sources.

- I see now that the dev might not move Elemental Attunement to master trait. So we can still proc. sprint and protection on swaps.
- He also mentioned the popular fresh air spec being combined with diamond skin, which I was also considering, since the damage (of fresh air) is a lot of fun in both s/d and d/d. 0/30/30/0/10 is very doable, because my common fresh air spec has been 0/30/0/10/30, and living without the 10 points in water is easily done with the proposed changes.

As D/D I feel that every time I dodge I’m going to heal or cripple my foe, even when I don’t put 30 in arcana, I still think I’m going to do those things. However it’s only ever the dodge in water that has ever played a noticable role because the range on the damage attacks is very easily avoided by players. The blind almost never applies to anything. I try to dodge in air to finish a downed player in spvp and the blindness almost never shows up. It’s like we need to stand directly on top of the person at the start of the dodge if we want it to land. Overall, Evasive Arcana has taught me how to waste dodges more than anything. lol – But the cleansing wave on dodge has been a lot of fun using. Playing a new spec without cleansing wave in it at all will be a nice change of pace, really. Especially if I never need it.

To be continued > ran out of space with my wall of text. >>

With lingering atunements airburst with fresh air from water will be cool

I’m stunned to see a frank assessment of the quality of Ele traits, and happy changes are coming.

I’m not so thrilled it has taken this long, I don’t understand why traits that were considered either awful or outright broken and bugged over a year ago are only just now being changed or fixed.

Not trying to be excessively bitter about it, but I love the Ele, and the state of Ele traits was one of the reasons I dropped the game for (wait for it) about a year.

When I’m going through the Trait list and going ‘meh, meh, meh, ugh’ instead of ‘ooooh I wish I could take this’, something is wrong.

Anyway, can’t wait to play with the new traits.

Thank you very much John for participating in the debate. It is great to hear that you are sceptical of some changes aswell. I have to admit I was very outraged, when I read the patch notes, because I fear a friend of mine will stop playing the game when his wvw rank 500+ dd ele gets another swing of the nerf bat (and this is a big one). I have mained a ele for a long time but couldn t handle it myself anymore so I moved on to other classes but he didnt and I feel his pain.

IMHO of a small scale wvw player:

Diamond Skin -bad idea… this will be completely overpowered against the very popular dire condition builds in a 1vs1 Situation and will become totaly useless in grp play where it is very difficult to stay over 90% without disengaging. It gives me a feeling of rock paper sissors, which I think is a horrible concept to balance a game.
I can also see some very lame builds coming up with this one in combination with focus.

Cleansing Wave – very upsetting that in this cond heavy meta, the current builds will have to sacrifice even more to get some cond removal, specially when all the options in the water adept tear are worthless. You are evaluating traits and then ordering them by their value, which in theory is correct but you are not thinking about the players. Unfortunately there is an over abundance of useless traits in this tree. The Traits are actualy not designed by the actual gameplay, but of a idea of a elementals. Like: lets get 3 water traits together and make them do vulnerability and chill… water puts out fire… and the worst part: more dmg when attuned to water ?!?!

-Don t take away more cond removal from dd eles…
Elementalists are allready pressed defensivly from the beginning, when getting condition spiked by incendiary power and dhoomfire builds [which are borderline broken, specially compared to burning precision: 30% chance to apply 1 sec of burning (2sec cd) vs 100% chance to apply 4 sec of burning (10sec cd)… please…]

before going through with this changes to the water line: give the ele decent alternatives in the adept tree . 6 basicly worthless Traits as option in an adept tree is only gona upset more Elementalists.

I find all the cooldown lowering traits for the ele are totally subpar to other classes. we are only 25% of the time in one element and gain no aditional benefits from this traits. other classes are 50% of the time using this weapons and always get aditional benefits… makes absolutely no sense to me and I always felt elementalists get duble screwed on the cd lowering traits.

Most eles don t need soothing disruption since they already have perma regen and well before this comming nerf had vigor, so the only point to take it is together with cleansing water.

Arcane:
Taking away the ability take arcane atunement and evasive arcana is a HUGE nerf to the class and my guess is it will brake the dd eles spine in small grp fights.

The build might still work in 1vs1 with cleansing water and soothing disruption but this is really pigeon holding the dd ele into a old spec, that we have being forced out of since months, when some eles are just starting to enjoy trying out new builds.

Suggestion if you want to go through with forcing players out of evasive arcana: Zephyrs speed is a useless trait and if it could be replaced with something like 30% endurance gain while attuned to air, that would be a be awesome. You can then go on and remove evasive arcana from the ele class so this doesn t get abused.

an other option would be to make arcane atunement one of the minor traits, since all the elementalists need it and lingering atunements and specialy arcane precision are very lack luster traits.

I find the Elementalist is a great support class, but suffers alot from grp play, since he gains basicly no defensive benefit from other classes exept, stealth from other classes and guardians stability and cond removal, while beeing pretty fragile to bursts. I cannot count how many times we instakilled elementalists with a cordinated spike of 3-8 people. On the other extreme we have a warrior who has amazing defensiv abilitys but profits from all the defensiv abilitys a guardian and elementalist provide and becomes a real Juggernaut when buffed with protection and regen.
Something similar to Altruistic Healing could really help the Elementalist in this 5 man scenarious.

My cantrips that I commonly use are: armor of earth (you should always have stability), cleansing flame (because 3+ conditions with water on cd is bound to happen), and lightning flash. I prefer those last 2 because they have short cds, and provide more mobility, which is the most important thing as a squishy.

So lets talk about mobility. We need the 10 in air. We need fiery greatsword to escape and to chase. We need to remove cripple and immobilize. We are not in-tune with other fast classes, ever since the Ride the Lightning cd nerf. Sure, the timer will be reduced if we hit something, but when breaking combat, we don’t want to hit anything and be locked into combat movement speed. The best way to get away from a zerg right now is pop armor of earth while summoning feiry greatsword, while you’re already at least 900 yards away from the people chasing you, then greatsword 3, dodge in water if anything was placed on you, and greatsword 4, while switching into air for the sprint from Elemental Attunement. The 2nd way to do this is to have stability on earth attunement which takes 20 points in earth, which is something people might add to their new spec. in December. A third way is to earthquake the people chasing you, ride the lightning, then summon the greatsword. Or summon greatsword ahead of you, lightning flash/mistform under heavy fire, take 2nd sword, and sail away. I only ever use mistform as a way to run through enemies into a portal of a keep/tower usually. That said, the thrill of D/D was always the ability to get out and heal. The simple change of longer ride the lightning cooldown and heal in mist form took that element away, while other classes still are able to do this, namely warrior and thief, while they already have better healing, better armor, and far superior offensive skills. So, it just does not make sense to me that we had those changes made to us. Breaking combat to heal had to have been a huge complaint to warrant those changes. But then moving our stun breakers around just made that first change a real letdown for the class as a whole. There are so very few D/D solo roamers now, and clearly these 2 things are why.

I pray that our anti-conditions options save us in the long run.

JonPeters.5630:

P.S. bug fix for Lingering Elements is coming on Nov. 26th as well.

Does this mean that it’ll work properly with minor traits only or will it work with all attunment-based traits? (like +10% damage when in fire)

If Jon or a Dev gets a second I would like to know how they view the weapon sets for elementalist.

I remember reading that they want it that your character is your character and the type of combatant you are is your weapon set.

I always viewed D/D as the more tankier option of all the weapon sets. It makes sense since it is the melee weapon set. Staff I always viewed as nuker/cc but you can go bunker support, it is always appeared to be able to play both extremes full glass or full support well.

S/D the burst weapon set that disengages to get better positioning and prepare to set you up for spike again.

D/F or S/F I am not sure where they fit. I have seen D/F nukers with group setup S/F can be a pain kind of reminds me of glass rangers sitting in the back. I find S/F to be alot of fun. It isn’t awesome for roaming be in a group it is alot of fun.

Diamond Skin
This seems fun to play with, but not against. Some condition builds, primarily necromancers, have very little direct damage to break through it. Perhaps make it a stacking buff that provides immunity to 1 condition application per stack, which builds up while above the health threshold? That way a condition user could break through it eventually regardless of the direct damage they’re outputting.

Aquamancer’s Alacrity
If you really want to make this master tier, consider adding some bonus to the respective attunement. Many professions have weapon cooldown reduction traits which provide bonuses with the relevant weapons – the only exceptions are Thief, for obvious reasons, and elementalists (though arguably the one trait guardians have which does this isn’t very useful anyways). Similarly, do the same for the other attunement cooldown traits. I have, in the past, suggested making Lingering Elements Duration the profession stat for Arcana with some baseline attunement bonus built into the class, and putting the attunement recharge on the Alacrity traits.

Aquamancer’s Alacrity/Cleansing Wave moving to master tier
My staff build currently uses both of these, with the GM slot for Cleansing Water. The purpose of your change is to make it harder to get these effects by having a small investment in Water; however, it also makes it harder to work them into a build for players with a full investment in Water. Regardless, Cleansing Wave by itself isn’t strong enough to be a master tier trait – it was always the synergy with attunement recharge rate that made it as strong as it is; it requires investment elsewhere already as well.

The preview’s full of small changes to trait tiers, like ANet aren’t sure where they should be. I honestly want to suggest a new “transitional” trait tier: Traits which are unlocked at master tier (20 points), but can be slotted in adept tier trait slots. This could be used for cases where a trait’s too strong to be allowed at a 10 point investment, but players consider a master trait in the same line too necessary to give up for it.

So what am I supposed to do with the first 10 points in Arcane magic if I play d/d Ele? I don’t use Arcane skills so the only trait I can possibly use is Windborne Dagger, which is one of the most useless traits ever.. Thx a lot, really. Actually I now feel even more forced to go deeper in Arcane and Water magic, cause you wanna move some of the most essential adept traits… With only difference that I now have to pick aweful traits too.

Columbo.5924:

Diamond Skin
This skill is going to be hard to balance, as somebody already stated. I guess it will range from useless to borderline OP depending on the enemy you are facing. It is also very hard to tell how this skill will fare in group compositions. I would rather prefer something like “incoming condition duration reduced by 33%” without a health threshold. That way the effect would become far more calculable, there could be some active counterplay on the condition players side and condition remove would become less of a concern for an elementalist. This would also complement geomancers freedom or rock solid really well.

For the record I feel that this is a pretty bad idea. Warriors have an example of a -33% duration reduction at the adept level, though it specifically only affects snares. With Superior Runes of Melandru and Lemongrass Poultry Soup buffs you get a cumulative 98% duration reduction on conditions. For most intents and purposes this makes warriors right now capable of passively ignoring all snares.

If a blanket -33% duration reduction was given to elementalists for ALL conditions, then the same setup could make them capable of brushing off every single condition in the game in much the same way, in a way that is much worse than a complete immunity over a threshold.

JonPeters.5630:

Summation of high risk concerns for elementalist.
P.S. bug fix for Lingering Elements is coming on Nov. 26th as well.

OoOoh I haven’t prayed at church for nothing!

The proposed changes are mainly focussing on making popular traits more difficult to obtain and also eliminating some popular combinations. This won’t change the Ele’s need to spec mainly in survivability, it will just make Ele’s less viable in general. So this won’t result in more build diversity at all.
In my view this should be seen as a clear sign that the base Ele is lacking survivability and that the alternative options are just too weak. Move some of the survivability from traits and slot skills to the base Ele, because atm the gap is just too large. Also boost the alternatives in a way that they are actually worth considering when comparing all options. This should lead to Ele’s being able to either get that extra damage or going for that extra survivability. Maybe even add viable possibilities for builds focussing more on condition damage, crowd control, support or on the mechanics of conjure weapons for example (I know there are traits for conjures but aside from a few parts of the game conjure weapons are just not worth using).

On a side note I want to thank you for sharing your ideas so openly with us. It’s nice to see an approach like this for a change and I think it ultimately leads to the best results.

Honestly I’m not even going to touch Diamond Skin as a trait option because there is still no reason for an elementalist in WvW to trait 30 points into earth at the sacrifice of everything else. The cantrips build is the only viable support build we have right now (speaking from 1800 hours of WvW experience on an ele here) and what you call “dependence” on Arcana is instead the only viable option we have to counter zerg play. Even d/d roamers take 30 in water and arcane; it’s considered necessary in order to survive in the WvW setting. Any ele that does not take trait points in those two trees gets 14k crit by thief roamers and is ineffectual in group settings. I find it offensive that people here are talking about “breaking” eles of “relying” on Arcana. This blames the users for trying to master what are, in my opinion, broken mechanics. And until we have more viable options for build variety, I will be sticking with my cantrips build. However, it baffles me that you would punish people for traiting into water and Arcana when you say you want to “break” them of this, and instead force them to trait /more/ into those trees to get the same basic benefits that define the class. Especially if you want people to instead trait more into Earth, or into Fire and Air. How do you expect us to have survivability without the lowest two trees? By abusing this new mechanic you want to come out with? I want the eles here to go into WvW and get hit with /one/, even /one/ hammer strike and see if you remain invulnerable to conditions. And, once you’re vulnerable to them, good luck! Because you’ve not traited into water and arcane, and you have no way to combat them any longer.

I am not addressing PvE dungeon speed running builds for eles because these require no survivability and honestly no skill. It doesn’t take skill to trait for power and summon a lightning hammer.

“Only Air and Water have good grandmaster traits right now”

While I don’t disagree, have you overlooked Evasive Arcana in Arcana tree?
Even with the moving of traits most people will still go 30 into this tree just for this trait, because its that good.

Jon,

I’m curious as to what the justification is for the Elementalist having the lowest health pool.

Am I wrong in thinking that a D/D glass cannon Elementalist (i.e. melee range, lowest health, lowest armor) should have the highest consistent damage output in the game?

Thedenofsin.7340:

JonPeters.5630:

xiv.7136:

JonPeters.5630:

Summation of high risk concerns for elementalist.

………..

I still believe there is work to be done at the grandmaster tier in Fire at the very minimum and that Air and Water are the only truly good grandmaster choice right now. There are also still a handful of just terrible traits that will still get looked at, but we felt like we were already bordering on changing too much.

Thanks,

Jon

P.S. bug fix for Lingering Elements is coming on Nov. 26th as well.

Thanks for participating in the thread, let’s get a good and meaningful discussion that will help you guys enact positive and balanced changes. Don’t be afraid of changing too much when a lot needs changing.

First of all, try Diamond Skin at 80% and see if anyone takes it. 90% is kind of pointless, esp for a grandmaster trait. I don’t even know if it’ll see much play at 80%.

Cooldown reduction traits don’t mean the same for elementalist as for other classes, we’re not weaponswappers who use 2 weaponsets (and some classes use 1 for 80% of the time), we swap attunements constantly. No one is going to take 20% in all lines, that would make for a horrible spec. Make them stronger in the 30% region for specialisation at the master trait level, or more accessible to open up some 2/2 options.

Cantrip mastery is one of those things that needs to be accessible. Elementalists need survivability options since glass cannons are as glass as they get, and they don’t do the damage of other class specs. The reliance on cantrips is a symptom of a different survivability problem with eles, not the problem itself. Speaking of which, LF stunbreaker, needed, come on it’s obvious that it needs it, it’s blink.

Also I think you need to have at least one attunement per weapon giving some decent single target damage. Looking at staff personally but those autos are just wack.

Also revisit some of that D/D stuff. I don’t know if you play D/D but it’s just not up to par right now, it needs roamer capability or what is it for.

Right now I am thinking 85% on diamond skin as high health eles could break this at 80% imo.

Also thinking 25% cooldown on the alacrity traits so we can move slowly. If we go 30% and have to nerf after that I would not be happy. The diamond skin thing is possible for dec 10th. The cooldown thing on alacrity traits is more likely to be the following patch because it has a lot of testing requirements that concern me.

Jon

Jon, this is insane talk. Damage immunity is incredibly powerful and hard counters many builds. It’s not good gameplay.

If you’re insisting on doing this, then be equitable and make direct damage immunity traits available at the grandmaster levels for necromancers and engineers.

See how silly that sounds?

Damage reduction is one thing, but complete immunity..? Why are you doing this?

Its condition immunity. Not damage immunity. You are seriously under-estimating your basic attacks with their raw power in a complete condition based build.
Don’t you dare compare one class to another. Don’t even dare.

First, I just want to say that this patch seems like it is going to be great for the elementalist. I can already think of 4-5 new builds I want to try, and I greatly appreciate the dev responses to the issues in this thread. It is so nice to feel like we are being heard as a community, and I know we are not always the most welcoming bunch.

However, I have some serious concerns about the changes to Elemental Attunement and Renewing Stamina. Playing D/D and being in the fray is pretty rough sometimes, and losing either vigor or protection from these two traits is really detrimental. I have been roaming in WvW and practicing in PvP since the preview notes were released, trying to drop one trait or the other just to see how it will run before I jump to conclusions, and it really does make an enormous difference. In the case of Renewing Stamina, removing it in favor of Elemental Attunement heavily impacts the entire playstyle and flow of the D/D set, while significantly dropping one’s ability to survive. At the same time, dropping Elemental Attunement to take Renewing Stamina lessens the ability for an ele to counterplay. If I need to catch a running target, I can swap to air. If I anticipate a burst, I can swap to earth. The list goes on. Running 20-30 in Arcana without both of those traits for certain specs is just too big of a hit to take.

JonPeters.5630:

That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits. I think a good compromise would be to place Renewing Stamina back in the adept tier, placing is where the other professions get this type of trait, and instead move Final Shielding to the master tier where it could live alongside Arcane Retribution as two good choices in arcane builds that take Arcane Mastery in the adept tier.

Personally, this sounds like the perfect solution to me. I understand the concern that you do not want to allow an ele to just throw 10 in Arcana for a really powerful trait like Elemental Attunement and call it a day. However, Renewing Stamina seems to be an appropriate fit for the Adept tier overall. Moving Elemental Attunement up to the Master tier while keeping Renewing Stamina at Adept will allow eles who really want to invest in that line to achieve some very nice effects at the cost of raw stat points and strong traits in the other lines. I really hope you take this potential compromise that you have proposed as it would be greatly appreciated and, I think, be better for overall balance and build diversity.

With that said, I want to apologize for the seemingly endless wall of text, and again say thank you for the contributions you have made to this thread thus far.